How to Get Away with Murder:

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Transcript of How to Get Away with Murder:

How to Get Away with Murder:“Ordinary” Women as Monsters in the Third Reich

Nazi Women: Imagery vs RealityIlse KochPuzzleGiven that Nazism relegated women primarily to passive and domestic roles, why did women join and strive to participate actively in private and public spheres in Nazism? What did Nazism offer women? Were the women who took on passive roles really victims? Were the women who took on active roles monstrous? Theories: Victims or Monsters?How can we explain how women acted in the Third Reich?From Most Passive to Most ActiveAnalysis & ConclusionNazism offered women power and agency where Weimar feminism had failed (even if only the perception of power).Power over private sphere: education, culture, and the future of Germany.Power in the workforce - nurses, factory workers, secretaries, etc. Power over another race.Nazi women "got away with murder" because they were perceived to be 'victims' of Nazism. The few women who were actually tried and convicted were the women who were deemed 'monsters'. Gertrud Scholtz-KlinkIdeal Nazi WomanTheory 1Women as Victims

Theory 4Theory 5Theory 6So What?It is important to recognize that Nazi women had agency. If these women are viewed as victims or monsters today, then Nazism becomes a unique point in history - unrepeatable. This viewpoint is dangerous! Nazis were "ordinary" people susceptible to the situational ethics of their time - just like we are today. The Nazi movement (or a similar movement) is more than likely to happen again - especially if we ignore the history or simplify our explanations to that of brainwashed victims of propaganda or psychopathic monsters.Gender Performativity

Judith Butler: “...Simone de Beauvoir claims, 'one is not born, but, rather, becomes a woman,'...In this sense, gender is in no way a stable identity or locus of agency from which various acts proceed; rather, it is an identity tenuously constituted in time -an identity instituted through a stylized repetition of acts, " (Butler, 1988, p 2).Nazi women simply performed their expected role in Nazi society.Women as Monsters & KillersIlse Koch Hitler's Furies Failed Weimar FeminismvsEconomic betterment Revaluing the Feminine

DataNS-Frauen Warte:Women’s fashion had a French/European influenceWomen as consumersWomen informed about politics and other culturesHonoring women's roles: household and children upkeep articlesFrauen:Oral histories that show a variety of experiences and forms of agency through idealism. Hitler's Furies:Perpetrators- women who found new sources of power:New power over “subhumans”New enemy other than the “oppressive male”New ways out of household oppression